Direct Photon Production in Proton-Nucleus and Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the unexpected large-pT suppression of prompt photons in high-energy nuclear collisions, attributing it to initial state interactions and energy sharing issues, with predictions for LHC energies.

Contribution

It introduces a color dipole approach to explain nuclear suppression of prompt photons and provides the first predictions for LHC energies considering gluon shadowing effects.

Findings

Good agreement with PHENIX data in p+p collisions

Identification of initial state interactions as cause of suppression

Predictions for nuclear effects at LHC energies

Abstract

Prompt photons produced in a hard reaction are not accompanied with any final state interaction, either energy loss or absorption. Therefore, besides the Cronin enhancement at medium transverse momenta pT and small isotopic corrections at larger pT, one should not expect any nuclear effects. However, data from PHENIX experiment exhibit a significant large-pT suppression in central d+Au and Au+Au collisions that cannot be accompanied by coherent phenomena. We demonstrate that such an unexpected result is subject to the energy sharing problem near the kinematic limit and is universally induced by multiple initial state interactions. We describe production of photons in the color dipole approach and find a good agreement with available data in p+p collisions. Besides explanation of large-pT nuclear suppression at RHIC we present for the first time predictions for expected nuclear effects also in the LHC energy range at different rapidities. We include and analyze also a contribution of gluon shadowing as a leading twist shadowing correction modifying nuclear effects at small and medium pT.